


Wash hands to refresh gender

by notjuli



Series: School Work [5]
Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Foucault Theory, Gender Issues, Gender Themes, LGBTQ Themes, Transgender themes, trans themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21585943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjuli/pseuds/notjuli
Summary: An essay I wrote for one of my classes (Philosophy) this year, in relation with some of the things we'd worked in class about Foucault and having to use some key concepts in the text.
Series: School Work [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556440
Kudos: 5





	Wash hands to refresh gender

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Lavarse las manos para refrescar el género](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21563245) by [notjuli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjuli/pseuds/notjuli). 



> This is a translation of one of my own works I originally wrote in Spanish (which is my first language).  
> This translation was done in one morning in like an hour, so if you notice any errors please do let me know in the comments, and if there's any sentence/idiom that doesn't really make sense please tell me as well bc I realised as I translated this that translateing idioms is weird lmao.

Public restrooms, generalized bourgeois institutions in European cities from the 19th century, originally thought as body waste managment spaces in the urban spaces, will progressively become gender surveillance booths. During the 20th century, the restroom becomes an authentic vigilance booth, in which the adequacy of each body with the current codes of masculinity and femininity is evaluated. An unwritten law allows the casual visitors to inspect the gender of every new body that decides to cross the threshold, and that's how in each restroom a small crowd supervises the access of each new visitor to the small private (semi-private, if at all,) compartments in which each hides.

Being someone who during their life has been to both bathrooms -the girls one and the boys one, the mens and womens, ladies and gentlemen, pink and blue, with a skirt or without a skirt, moustache or purse-, I think I'm someone who can talk with a bit of both perspectives, and with a third perspective that, in many cases, it's not usually talked about, because let's be honest, it's better to stay silent. But I have an assignment to do and a class to pass and a teacher that I'm not afraid to give an essay on this subject.

Generally in spaces inhabited by mostly adult audiences, like shopping malls, cinemas, restaurants, etc., there is rarely anyone at the door of the toilets, watching those who enter, playing judge and allowing or denying entrance according to hairstyles, attires or physical features.

In school, however, it's another story.

To get started, in schools the restrooms often are milimetrically planned so that, from their silver throne in their marginally-bigger-than-the-restroom office, some adults can always check out the door. (And needless to say, me, us, the students, are in a disadvantaged position with this (any and every) adult, that has power over us both in and outside of the classroom, everywhere while still within school grounds (and in cases outside of those too), no matter if it's recess time or if you are in the restroom. Or if you want to go to the restroom.) Then we have to keep in mind that, at least during the first few years in school, going to the restroom is an activity reserved exclusively for the moment of _recess,_ as it's often not allowed to go during class time. (Which is another clear example of discipline and microphysical power; the discipline established in schools probably during the 18th or 19th century, for one to get used to eight-hour days of nonstop labor. (Which in turn are another way of microphysical power itself, as it was calculated eight hours because, according to some scientists back in the day, an adult person can be 10 hours without going to the bathroom before having serious health issues, so they calculated that with an hour journey going and another coming, an eight hour work day with no recess would be ideal. (Ideal for whom?)))

So, let's come back to the point, bathroom times are during recess. Several other problems arise from this; during recess half of the student body (if I'm allowed to colloquially exaggerate) wants to go to the bathroom (and although physical space is not usually a problem, since there are enough bathrooms in the school for the level of demand that there usually is) thus, if you go to the bathroom during recess _someone_ you're going to meet. And that someone, in many cases, tends to be an adult. During recess their function seems to be to haunt the halls, interrupt conversations with nonsensical questions and keep an eye out for the bathrooms. I can not count the times I was just about to walk in to the toilets just to receive _the look_ from some adult on duty I've seen no more than ten times in my life and having to make do with the hand sanitizer that there's usually just by the door.

Let's suppose though, that I manage to get into the restroom in a recess without any adult telling me anything, (and what an achievement that is,) it's only to find those same looks now from my peers, fellow students, from the inside. Few are the ones who say something, with me present at least, but the look is there. And isn't that another way of discipline? Them, whomever may be in the restroom, (no matter which one of the two it may be,) have a clear power over me; I'm the one who is out of place, (again, no matter which restroom,) not them.

It is applied this way, with few more than looks or some comment in a hushed voice and the usual “you're not about to go in there, right?” or “wrong restroom” or “this is the men's/women's”, a form of discipline that few suffer consciously. And that's something worth mentioning; everyone is subjected to this discipline, but for most it's not something worth noticing. It's something as naturalized as that the silhouette of a moustache is for those born with a penis and the silhouette of a mouth for those born without one.

The restroom, a place whose objective should be no more than the physical place reserved for the expulsion of organic waste, it becomes like this, in a cissexist heterosexual disciplinary place like no other, where youre judged for those in and outside, whether you correspond in that place or not, because even for those who can assimilate to the steriotypes of femininity or masculinity there's judgement to impart, so let's not even mention those who can't or won't do so. We have to resist, from the inside and from the outside, whether we fit in or we don't, because going to the public toilet is, for everyone, an experience, to say the least.

That's what I do, resist, fight, every time I go to the toilet outside of my own home. And I have to admit that I'm still scared, especially in school; but with a few jostles from my friends, “hey, will you accompany me to the bathroom?” and the like, I gathered courage and I've gone to the public restroom (especially in school) more times in the last six months than in the previous four and a half years.

And it's a fight and it's a problem that few are aware of, but like with everything. Now, at least, I can wash my hands for real, that that many hand sanitizer is bad for the skin.


End file.
